Derrida, J - A Certain Madness Must Watch Over Thinking, (1995) 45 Educational Theory 273

8/13/2019 Derrida, J - A Certain Madness Must Watch Over Thinking, (1995) 45 Educational Theory 273

1/19

273

CERTAIN MADNESS MUST WATCH OVER THINKINGJacques Derrida

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences SocialesFranqois Ewald

Director, Centre Michel Foucault

EWALD:Lets think about your future biographer. One may imagine that, idlyrepeating the date on your birth record, he will write: Jacques Derrida was born onJuly 15, 1930 in El-Biar, near Algiers [Algeria].With this biological birth, it may beup to you to contrast your true birth, the one which would proceed from this privateor public event when you would have really become yourself.DERRIDA:ou are coming on rather strong for a start. You have the nerve to say: itis up to you to say when you were born. No, if there is one thing for which I cannotbe held responsible,2 t is precisely that, be it what you call the biological birth,transferred to the objectivity of the birth certificate, or the true birth. Iwas born,indeed. Here is one of the most singular expressions I know, especially in i ts Frenchgrammatical form [je suis nt literally states: I am born]. If the style of thisinterview lent itself to it, instead of responding directly to your question, I wouldprefer to begin the interminable analysis of this sentence: I, I am, I am born [je,jesuis, je suis ne]-for which no indication of time is given. Concern about this willnever abate. For the event thus designated can be announced in me only in the futureI am (not)born (yet) Je ne)suis (pas encore) ne]]but in a future which takes theform of a past to which I shall never have been present, and which, for this reason,always remains promised nd besides also multiple. Who said we were born onceonly?But how can we deny that through all the promised births, it is a sole and sameoccurrence, the unique occurrence, which insists and repeats itself forever? This issomewhat what is related in Cir~umfession.~I am not born yet because I was1. This article isa translationby Denise EgCa-Kuehne of an interview first published in Magazine Litterraire86 11991):18-30. ts full original title, in translation, is A Certain MadnessMust Watch Over Thinking:Refusing to huild a philosophical system, Derrida privileges experience and writes out of compulsion.Dialogue around traces and deconstructions. It is reprinted here with permission. The original text formathas been generally respected in its use of italics, undcrlining, quotation marks, parentheses, and so on. Inaddition, all French terms appear in italics.2. The French text is: il vous revient [translated here it is up to you]de dire quand vous tesnd. And: siquelque chose nepeut pas merevenir (translated here something for which Icannot be held responsible),cest bien 0 emphasis added].Revenir u carries several meanings. In his translation of Positions (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1981 Alan Bass pointed out (cf. Note 5,100) hat the terms chosen by Derridasometimes combine several meanings ometimes antithetical ones eneath the same signifier.. . Allof these te r m inscribediffemncewithin themselves: they are always different from themsclves, theyalways defer any singular grasp of their meaning. (Trans.)3 Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, [acqiies Derrida (Paris: Seuil es Contemporains, 1991Trans. G. Bennington [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). The original French title isCirconfession, translated by Bennington as Circumft-ssion. (InFrench the word for circumcision iscirconcision] Trans.)

EDUCATIONAL THEORY / Summer 1995 / Volume 45 / Number 31995 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois


2/19

274 E D U C A T I O N A L T H O R Y SUMMER995 VOLUME5 1NUMRERrobbed of the moment when my namable identity was decided. Everything is s e t outfor t to be so, it is what is called culture. And so through so many relays, one can onlytry to recover this theft or this institution which could, which must, have occurredmore than once. But however iterable and divisible it remains, the once onlystands fast.EWALD:o you mean that you do not want to have an identity?DERRIDA:ndeed I do, like everyone else. But by beating around an impossible thingagainst which I too probably stand fast, the I constitutes the very form ofresistance. Every time this identity proclaims itself, every time I am bound bybelonging to a context, if I may say so, someone or something cries out: watch out,theres a trap, you are caught. Get free [degage] .Get yourself free [degage-toi l .Yourcommitment [ e n g a g e m e n t ] s el~ewh ere.~ot very original, is it ?EWALD: he work you do, is it to recover this identity?DERRIDA:o doubt [sans d ~ u t e ] , ~ut the gesture which tries to recover, distancesfrom t s e l f , grows ever more distant. It must be possible to formalize the law of thisunbridgeable gap. It is somewhat what I always do. Identification is a difference tooneself, a difference from-with [davec] neself. Therefore with, without,and e x c e p twith oneself. The circle which brings one back to birth can only remain open, but allat once as an opportunity, a sign of life, and a wound. It would be death if it closedonto birth, onto a fulfillment of the statement, or of the knowledge which says I amborn.EWALD:n Circumfession you attribute a fundamental place to the fact that youwere circumcised. Is this your mystery today?DERRIDA:nder the name circumcision, I often wonder (and Circumfession is alsothe journey of this question or this claim)whether there is a real event which I canattempt, not to remember, of course, but to re-elaborate, to reactivate in some kindof memory without representation -or whether it is a delusion, a simulacrum (butthen where from would its privilege come?),a screen destined to the figurativeprojection of so many other events of the same type, to lead me astray as much as toguide me. Among other things, circumcision signifies a certain mark which, comingfrom others, and endured in absolute passivity, remains in the body, and visible,undoubtedly undissociable from the proper name also received from the other at thattime. It is also the moment of the signature (theothers as much as our own)by whichwe let ourselves be inscribed in a community or in an unerasable alliance: birth ofthe subject, as you suggested earlier, rather than biological birth, but a body andan irreversible marking are necessary here. Every time this mark and this nounappear (and this is not limited to cultures who practice the so-called real circum-cision), at least the figure of a circumcision imposes itself to me. What does figuremean here? This is what Circumfession revolves around.4. Engager carries meanings of to involve, to commit, as well as to engage, to set in motion. By the sametoken, gage is at once a pledge, a token exchanged in an engagement, a promise or an agreement. Thescwords are found in many of Derridas texts and carry the symbolics of responsibility as well as of debt.[Trans.)5. Sans doute conveys both meanings of no doubt, and probably. (Trans.)


3/19

DERRIDAND EWALD A Certain Madness 275EWALD:What relation can be found between this first birth and this other birth whichyour arrival in France will be, your studies at Louis-le-Grand,6khcigne, and yourinscription in a whole different world?DERRIDA:ets say that in Algeria, I had started to enter the fields of literature. andphilosophy. I dreamed of being a writer nd already some models informed mydream, a certain language governed it, as well as some famous figures and names. Itis like circumcision, you know, it begins before you do. Very early, I read Gide,Nietzsche, Valery, in the eighth or ninth grade. Gide probably even earlier: admira-tion, fascination, cult, and fetishism. no longer know whats left of that. I remembera young teacher, his hair was red, his name was Lefevre, he came from the Metropolis[France],which made him a tad ridiculous and naive in the eyes of the young pieds-n o i r ~ ~hat we were, somewhat bent on being hoodlums. He highly spoke of beingin love and of Les Nourritures Terrestres.a 1would have learned this book by heart.Certainly like all adolescents would, I liked his fervor, the lyricism of his declara-tions of war against religion and families (I have always had to translate I hatedhomes, families, anyplace where humans expect to find peace into a simple I dontbelong to this family).For me, it was a manifesto or a bible:at one and the same timereligious and neo-Nietzschean, sensualist, immoralist, and mostly very Algerian asyou know. I remember the hymn to Sahel, to Blida, and to the fruits of the Essaigarden. I read the totality of Gides works,9 and the Immoralist probably rushed meon to Nietzsche whom I certainly understood very poorly, and strangely enough,Nietzsche oriented me toward Rousseau, the Rousseau of the R veries.O recallmetamorphosing into a theater of the great debate between Nietzsche and Rousseau,and I was the extra ready to assume every part. I just liked what Gide says aboutProteus, and I naively identified with him who identified himself, if possible, withProteus. It was the end of the war (basically, my Algeria has been at war almostconstantly, since right after World War11the first movements which announced theAlgerian war were quelled).When Paris was occupied in 1943-44, he liberated townof Algiers had become a kind of literary capital. Gide was often in Northern Africa,Canius was widely discussed, and literary journals and new publishers proliferatedthere. All this fascinated me. I was writing nasty little poems which I published inNorth-African journals, and I kept a personal diary. But while I withdrew withinthese solitary readings and activities, well, in a disconnected and juxtaposed way, Ialso led the life of some sort of young hoodlum involved with a group which was6 . Louis-le-Grand is a high school in Paris offering classes called khiigne, preparing for thc entranceexamination to the Ecole Nvrmale Superieure. (Trans.17. French citizens of European origin who were residents of Northern Africa. [Trans.)8. Novel by Andre Gide (1897) n which the author expresses the excitement of a young man who sheds allconstraints and looks for happiness in the submission to his every desire. (Trans.)9. Andre Gidc 11869-1951)French writer. His works are about the passion for freedom (Les NourrituresTerrestres, 1897)and sincerity ILlmmoraliste, 1902),and the delusion of commitment (Voyageau Congo,1927;Retour delU.R.S.S. 9361.Hetried to define modem humanism which couldreconcileintelligencewith instincts [Les Caves d u Vatican, 1914; La Symphonie Pastorale, 1919; Les Faux Monayeurs, 1926;lournal, 1939-1950).He won the Nobel Prize in 1947. [Trans.)10. Les Rkveries du prorneneur solitaire 1782). n this novel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau evokes the warmestmemories from his past, and the most striking events of his life. (Trans.)


4/19

276 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y SUMMERYY5 / VOLUME5 / NUMBERmore interested in soccer and tracks than in studying. In the junior and philosophy[senior] years, 1 started reading Bergson and Sartre, who played a large part in whatwould be called a philosophical formation, at least in its beginnings.EWALD:Was the decision to attend the Ecole Normale yours or your parents?DERRIDA:y parents did not know what i t was. Me neither, even when I registeredfor hypokhdgne. When I entered kh6gneat Louis-le-Grand the following year,at the age of nineteen, it was quite simply the first trip in my life. I had never left ElBiar, in the suburbs of Algiers. The Parisian boarding school was a harsh experiencewhich I handled with great difficulty. was constantly,ill, or at least fragile, on theverge of a nervous collapse.EWALD:Until you entered the Ecole Normale?DERRIDA:es. These were the harshest and the most forbidding years. It was due inpart to a sort of exile, and for another part to the monstrous torture of the nationalcompetitions in the French education system. With competitive admission testssuch as the entrance examination to the Ecole Normale or the AgreggationILZ anyof those who were in my situation had the feeling that their whole life was at stakein this horrible machine, and that they were awaiting its sentence of life or death. Inthe case of failure, I was to return to Algiers and to a state of absolute precariousness

nd I did not want to return to Algeria definitively (both because I believed thatif I lived at home, I could never write, and already for political reasons.As earlyas the early fifties, colonial politics and mostly colonial society had becomeunbearable for me). Consequently, these years in khcigneand at the Ecole Normalewere trying years (discouragement, despair ailure at the admission tests them-selves: nothing there was given to me at first try).EWALD:et you remained at. the Ecole Normale for a long time?DERRIDA:his paradox did not escape your attention, and a lot can probably be readinto it. I have always been school sick, like you would say sea sick. I cried each yearon the first day of school way past the age where it is decent to do so. Still today, Icannot cross the threshold of an educational institution (for instance the ENS (EcoleNormale Supbieure] where I taught for twenty years,13 or the EHESS [Ecole desHautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales]where I have been teaching for6years]I4withoutphysical symptoms (I am talking about my chest and stomach) of discomfort andanxiety. And yet its true, Inever left school in general, and1was at theEcoleNormalefor a total of about thirty years.lsI must also be school sick, this time in the senseof home sick.11. Cf. Note 6.12. Placement examination to recruit teachers for high school and certain disciplines at the university levelincluding law, economy, medicine, and pharmacy. (Trans.)13.Derrida was invited by Hyppolite and Althusser to teach at the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1964, andtaught there until 1984. (Trans.]14. In 1983, Derrida was appointed to the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, dnector ofPhilosophical Institutions and is still teaching there. (Trans.)15. This interview was conducted in 1991. [Trans.)


5/19

DERRIDAND EWALD A Certain Madness 277EWALD:Your name is Jackie. Is it you who changed your name?DERIUDA:ou are asking me a question which is basically very serious. Yes,I changedmy first name when I started to publish, in fact the moment I entered the space ofliterary or philosophical legitimization, whose proprieties I observed in my ownway. As I realized that Jackie was not a possible name for an author, when in a wayI chose a semi-pseudonym, certainly close to my real first name, but very French,Christian, simple, I must have erased more things than I could say in a couple ofwords [itwould be necessary to analyze, again endlessly, the conditions in which inthe 1930s such a community ewish from Algeria ometimes chose Americanfirst names, sometimes those of film stars or heroes, William, Jackie, and so on).Butnever would I have touched my family name, Derrida, which I have always foundvery beautiful, dont you think? It has a nice resonance within me ut in fact,precisely like that of another person, and very rare. It is this name which allows meto speak this way, and to speak about it so freely. I would have liked to have inventedit, and I must dream of serving it, with unpretentiousness and abnegation, you seewhat Imean, and out of duty. But I shall refrain from talking about it here on anotherlevel. Time is limited.EWALD:n Circumfession you indicate that you had a second name, Elie.DERRIDA:hich is not on the birth records, I dont know why. I havea few hypotheses.It is a whole other story, the one around which Circumfession just about revolves,and I would not know [je ne sauris] how to talk about it here in this mode.I6EWALD: his seems to play a prominent role for you.DERRIDA:aybe, I dont know, I dont know whether it is true, spontaneous, orwhether I gradually reinvented it, whether I fantasized, whether I told myself a storyabout it, and rather late in my life after all, not prior to these past ten or fifteen years.EWALD:our first two books, The Problem of Genesis in Husserls Philosophy (1954)and The Originof Geometry (1962) re about Husserl. Did you have a philosophicalproject already?DERRIDA:lready an obsessing thematics was organizing a whole space of questionsand interpretations: the thematics of writing, between literature, philosophy, andscience. This concern is at the core of the Introduction to the Origin of Geometrya text I had elected to translate precisely because in i t Husserl stumbles over writing.I had then insisted on the status of the written object in the history of science. Whydoes the very constitution of ideal objects, and in an exemplary fashion of math-ematical objects, require s Husserl states it without drawing all the possible16.18 ne saurais is also a polite refusal: Icant, I wont. [Trans.)17. Le Probleme de l a genese dans la philosophie de Husserl (Paris:Prcsses Universitaires d e France, 1990).Derridas 1954 Masters thcsis (Trans.)and Tzaduction et Introduction Q LOriine de la geomitriedEdmondHusserliParis: PressesUniversitairesdeFrancc, 1962).The English translationof this latterbookcomes from the 1974 second reviscd French cdltion. Edmund Husserls Origin of Geometry: nIntroduction. ed. David B. Allison, trans., with a preface, John P. Leavey, Jr. (Stony Brook, N.Y.: NicolasHays, 1978).Rpt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989, with a new Afterword by the translator.(Trans.]


6/19

278 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y SUMMER995 / VOLUME5 / NUMBERconsequences from it he incorporation into what he calls the spiritual body ofwriting? Going through Husserl was not merely a digression. But i t is true thatunjustly, I am increasingly convinced of this also turned away from him.Nevertheless, the texts which followedIntroduction to the Originof Geometry andVoice and Phenomenon remain oriented by this problematics of writing, as I have,up to a certain point, systematized and formalized it in f Grammatology.*EWALD:Therefore your problem was: what is literature?DERRIDA:or instance, but in as much as this question extended beyond the meaningthat Sartre gave it. I had learned a great deal from What i s Literature


7/19

DERKIDAND EWALD A Certain Madness 279

of what it thematizes of the writing event, and on the other hand because of what,in its political history, connects it to this principled authorization to tell all whichrelates it in a unique fashion to what is called truth, fiction, simulacrum, science,philosophy, law, right, and democracy.EWALD: hat was at stake in these descriptions?DERRIDA:erhaps, among other things, an economical wager in a strategy of formal-ization hat more of impossible formalization. Perhaps even economy itself wasat stake, as well as the limit of all formalization. The challenge was attempting toconceptualize a large prevailing structure within a whole ensemble named philoso-phy. Why /is he trace (neitherpresence nor absence, thebeyondof thebeing [etant],therefore, even of the Being [latre] nd it is this whole aspect of negative theologieswhich has always interested me, especially in How To Avoid Speaking: Denials[PsycheJZ0)hat which sets philosophy in motion, and by the same token, refusesitself to philosophy, and resists properly ontological, transcendental, or philosophi-cal understanding in general? Without being foreign to philosophy, this attempt wasneither philosophical nor merely theoretical or critical, and it promised (itwas thisvery promise), it involved [engageait] new bodies of writing, the pledges [gages]ofother signatures, of new bodies, within which neither philosophy, nor literature, norperhaps general knowledge, would gather together their image or their history.Autobiography is certainly nothing but an old name to designate one of thesebodies thus committed [gag&].EWALD:But why is it so important to write? What does one commit [engage]of oneselfwhen writing?DERRIDA:just said pledge [gage]and commitment [engagement] of oneselfin astrange autobiography, yes, but the I does not exist, it is not present to itself untilwhat involves [engage] it in this way [occurs], and which is not it. There is not aconstituted sublect which commits [engage] tself to writing at a given moment forsuch or such a reason. It exists through i t [writing],given [donne]by the other: born[nk] s we bizarxely said earlier, born [ne] through being given [donne], delivered,offered and betrayed all at one and the same time. And this truth is a matter of loveand police, of enjoyment and law t one and the same time. This event is bothserious and microscopic. It is the whole enigma of a truth to be made. SaintAugustine often talks about making truth through confession. In Circumfession,I extensively quote him, and I try to think what this truth presents which appearsrebellious in the eyes of philosophical truth truth of adequation or revelation.EWALD:n 1968you were teaching at the Ecole Normale, high place of the contesta-tion. Did the events of May have any importance for you?21

20. Psyche. Inventions d e Iautre. Comment ne pas parler, Denegations [Paris: Galliniard, 1987 .Trans.Ken Frieden, HowToAvoid Speaking: Denials, in Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativityin Literature and Literary Theory ed. Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser (NewYork:ColumhiaUniversityPress, 1989 ,3 -70 .This essay is on negative theology, particularly that of Meister Eckhart. (Trans.121. May 1968: a vast movement of political, social and cultural contestation which developed in France inMay-June 1968. [Trans.)


8/19

280 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y SUMMER995 / VOLUME5 / NUMBERDERRIDA:was not what is called a soixunte-huitard.22 lthough a t the time Iparticipated in demonstrations and organized the first general assembly of this periodat Ulm Street, I was reserved, even anxious, before a certain spontaneist, fusionist,anti-union euphoria, and before the enthusiasm of finally liberated speech,restored transparency, and so on. I never believed in thosc things.EWALD:ou found this somewhat naive?DERRIDA:had nothing against it, but it is always difficult for me to be on the samewave length as the crowd. I did not have the feeling of participating in a majoroverhaul. But now, I believe that in this gaiety for which I had very little taste,something else was happening [arrivait,which also means was coming].EWALD:And what was that?DERRIDA:could not give it a name ome seismic tremor coming from afar andcarrying over a great distance. Within the culture and within the university, theseshock waves have not yet subsided.Iwas more sensitive to them after the fact, at thesight of the bitterness and regaining of control by the more conservative, evenretrograde, forces, especially within the university. It is during this aftershock thatI started to give a more visibly, lets say, militant form to my work as an educator.The foundation of the GREPH takes place during those years.23EWALD: hat w s 19682 What is that event which never comes to an end? What is itthat had to be sutured? Why were some people so frightened?DERRIDA:hrough spontaneism and a certain naturalistic utopism, an awareness ofthe artificial, artefactual character of institutions was undoubtedly emerging. Ofcourse, we did not wait until 1968 to know that, but perhaps to develop a morepractical and effective awarenessof it: because obviously, these nonnatural, founded,and historical things were no longer working.As usual, it is a breakdown which laysbare how the machine as such works. And as a consequence, because thesenonnatural, historical, and founded institutions were no longer working, they wereno longer perceived as founded at all, founded by right and legitimate. To this mustbe added the fact that the media, and with them the whole culture, were taking formsand dimensions which marked a real mutation, even in the very production of the1968 event. This opened up all kinds of questions on the legitimacy and origin ofthe existing powers: [questions of] sanction, evaluation, publication, communica-tion, and so on.

22. Someone who took an active part in the 1968 unrest. In 1968 Derrida stood back on some aspects of theMay 1968 movement, although he tookpart in the demonstrations andorganizcd the first general assemblyat the Ecole Normale SupCrieure, on Ulm Street. (Trans.)23 In an interview w-ith Imre Salusinsky 11987),Derridaanswered the question: Have you ever consideredhow your own ideas might eventually apply in the educational system, outside the university anddeclared: InFrance, in fact, with friendsor colleagues or students of mine, I was involved in trying to makea topic, a thematic problem, of this. We founded a group, in 1975,which is called Groupc de Recherchesur 1EnseignementPhilosophique [GREPH],dealing with the teaching of philosophy in high schools.. .inFrance we have philosophy in the last gradeof high school. Cri t ic i smin Society, ed. Imre Salusinsky (NewYork: Methuen, 1987),9-24. Rpt. of Southern Review[Adelaide]19 (1986): -12. Interview: Jacques Derridaon the University with Imre Salusinsky. (Trans.)


9/19

DERRIDAND EWALD A Certain Madness 281

EWALD:oes May 1968 designate a philosophical event?DERRIDA:o doubt, probably one of those philosophical events which do not take theform of a body of works or a treaty hut which bring forth [gortent],and always entail[cornportent], hese philosophical events which can be identified thanks to titles orauthors names. It is also a philosophical event or the promise of a philosophicalevent to practically question a social or discursive state which certain people wouldgain to have naturalized and dehistoricized, by unsettling it or participating in itstransformation, and to pose the question of the historicity of these structures.Whether we know it, want it, or not, this changes things in philosophy. It is difficultto follow its paths and i ts repercussions, and other historiographic categories andinstruments would he necded. Considering only the most common manifestationsof philosophical work, philosophy books are no longer written the same way. Exceptfor exceptions. One no longer teaches, no longer speaks to students, and especiallywith them, like in the olden days. They do not talk the same way betweenthemselves. This did not change in one day, nor in one month, but probably in thetidal wave which somehow gathered on the crest of this demonstration, in theunfurling of May 1968, in France and elsewhere.EWALD:las, published in 1974, was a book at once very novel and very baffling, atleast in i ts design.I4What was the project, the challenge of an enterprise like Glas?DEKRIDA:ithout renouncing the classical norms and exactingness of philosophicalreading for which I have always maintained the greatest respect, the goal in Glaswasto address seriously certain themes of course (family,family name, religion, dialec-tics, absolute knowledge, bereavement nd therefore a few others),but by placingside by side, column by column, the interpretation of a great canonic corpus ofphilosophy, that of Hegel, and the rewriting of Genet, a poet more or less outlawed,and hardly receivable. Hegel and Genet at the same time, face to face, at once oneinside the other and one behind the other, if the geometry or the mobility of thisposture is possible. Later on, the question of what propriety is will be raised again inThe Post Card,25with the positions of Socrates, seating and writing, and Plato,standing and pointing his finger. This contamination of a great philosophicaldiscourse by a literary text which is considered to be scandalous or obscene, and ofseveral norms or kinds of writing among themselves, could appear violentbeginning with its page setting. But it also joined with or reawakened a mostancient tradition: that of a page whose blocks of texts, of interpretation, and ofinternal margins are organized differently. Therefore, that of another space, anotherpractice of reading, writing, and exegesis. For me, i t was a way to assume in practice24. Glas (Paris: Galilee, 1974).Plus a two volume edition by Gonthicr-Denoel, 1982. Trans. John Leaveyand Richard Rand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986 .Leaveys book Glassary is very helpfulwhen reading Glas. From the dustjacltet: Glas is extraordinary in inany ways, most obviously in itstypography. Arranged in two columns, with inserted sections within these, the book simultaneouslydiscusses Hegels philosophy and Jean Genets fiction, and shows how two such seemingly distinct kindsof criticism can reflect and influence each other. (Trans.)25. La Carte Postale: de Socrate Freud et au-dela (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1980).The Iost Curd;FromSocrates 10 Freud and Beyond trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987 .


10/19

282 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y SUMMER995 VOLUME5 N U M B E Rthe consequences of certain propositions in OfG ram m at o l ogyconcerningbooks andthe linearity of writing. And also to do something quite different from mixingliterature andphilosophy, contrary to what has sometimes been said without readingit.EWALD:hen you write a book like this one, do you write in relation to yourself, ordo you address a particular public?DERRIDA:o doubt I address some readers whom I presume will be able to help me,to accompany me, to recognize [me],and to respond [to me]. The typical profile of apossible reader is announced in the instances of existing readers (sometimes ust oneis enough). Perhaps, we hope to entice others, but always in an ambiguous fashion:or rather [wehope] to discover or invent other readers who do not yet exist -but whoalready know, or will know, however, more than we do. There we are, in the mostobscure and confusing [ d h o u t a n t e ] , onfused [deroutee] opology, in the confusion[dkroute]of the destination: of what seemed convenient for me to name thedestinerrance or the clandest ination.EWALD: hen the book induces certain modes of reading?DERRIDA: hat's also possible, but without forming Iformer]or closing [ f e rm er]program of reading, without suturing a system of formalizable rules. It is always anopening, both in the sense of a nonclosed system, of the opening l e f t t o the freedomof the other, but also in the sense of the opening, the advance or the invitationex tended t o the other. The intervention of the other, who perhaps should no longerbe called just "reader," is an essential but always improbable counter-signature. Itmust remain un-anticipable. The possible occurrence of the absolute event, abottomless foundation [un ond sans fond]of initiative, always remains available tohim/her [the other], must always fall to him/her by right.EWALD:s this the same thing as instituting a group?DERRIDA:ather an open "quasi" community of people who, "since they like that,"while acknowledging receipt, also go somewhere else, and in turn read and write,quite differently.This is the generous response, always more faithful yet at the sametime more thankless.EWALD:ave you found this community?DERRIDA:t can never be found, one never knows whether it exists, and taking intoaccount the opening about which I was talking earlier, the gesture by which onewould think that one has found it [community]would not only be mystified, but itwould lose it [community], it would destroy it on the spot. Such a community isalways to come, it has an essential relationship to the singularity of the event, towhat is coming but (therefore) "has not arrived" [arrivk, which also means "oc-curred"].EWALD:However, in the United States, there seems to be around you a number ofreaders who have managed to formalize this practice of reading and writing.DERRIDA:number of very interesting things happened in the United States in thatrespect. It would require long analyses -which I started here and there. But I have


11/19

DERRIDAND EWALD A Certain Madness 283

much suspicion as to such a frequent and interested reckoning which consists insending me back to the United States, or in assigning me American residence. Whatare they trying to do or defend in this way?I leave it to your imagination. No, I spendonly a few days, a few weeks in the United States every year. However intense thisexperience, the generosity, but also the aggressiveness (you cant imagine) withwhich I meet there, the things which matter for my work happen also elsewhere,outside Europe, in Europe, and for instance certainly in France.EWALD:he amount of works you have published is extensive. What relation is therebetween one book and another? Each time, is your objective to reinvent, to leave thepreceding trace in order to produce another one? Or is there any continuity?DERNDA:must give you a contradictory answer, yet typical and without originality:of course, something endures and is recognizable from one book to another, i t isundeniable, and anyway, I must want i t this way. Yet each text belongs to a wholedifferent story: there is discontinuity in the tone, the vocabulary, even the sentencestructure, and basically, in the address. It is really as if I had never written, not evenknown how to write I mean, very sincerely, in the most elementary, almostgrammatical way): each and every time I start a new text, as modest as it may be, Ifeel confusion in front of the unknown and the inaccessible, a crushing feeling ofawkwardness, inexperience, and impotence. Anything I had already written isinstantly obliterated, or rather, as if thrown over board.EWALD:ow does the idea of a book or an article occur to you?DERRIDA:kind of animal movement tries to appropriate what comes always, alwaysfrom an external provocation. By responding to some demand, invitation, or com-mand, an invention must nonetheless seek itself, and it must all at once defy a givenprogram, a system of expectations, and finally surprise me urprise me by havingsuddenly become for me imperious, imperative, even inflexible, like a very toughlaw. The more singular the form, approaching what is calledno doubt inappropriatelyfiction and autobiography, like in Glas, Post Card or Circumfession, themore this compelling surprises me. But all these books also tell a story in their ownway, and every time a new scene is described- the played-out story of their making.Afterwards, I forget just about everything of thc moment when this internalconstraint bent me and made me yield under itself.EWALD:n internal constraint his means that it is not a cultural constraint, or apolitical constraint.DERRIDA:ne always reckons with what one perceives of the cultural field. But eveni this reckoning negotiates very cleverly, it always puts itself in the service of awilder, more defenseless, more naive desire, in any case, of another culture which nolonger reckons, certainly no longer according to the norms of the present cultureor politics. One explains oneselfz6with somebody, with someone other , a l ive ord e a d , with some who have no identity on this cultural scene.26. Sexpliquer also means to dlscuss to talk the matter over, as well as to have it out withsomebody. (Trans.)


12/19

284 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y SUMMER995 VOLUME5 NUMBEREWALD:ogether with this entreaty which provides you with this incentive, there isalso a remarkable fact: all the texts you write are indexed to some great references,Husserl, Plato, Heidegger, Hegel, Rousseau, Jab&, Celan. The list is extensive.DERRIDA:here is always someonc else, you know. The most private autobiographyis explained with great transferencial figures which are themselves, and alsothemselves p lus someone else (for instance Plato, Socrates and a few others in PostCard;Genet, Hegel, Saint Augustine and somany others in Glas;or Circumfession;and so on).Even when speaking of the most intimate thing, for instance of ones owncircumcision, it is better to know that an exegesis is going on, that you carry itsdiversion, it s outline, and its memory inscribed within the culture of your body. Forinstance, take one example among a thousand others, one of which I have nevertalked, an explanation with Meister Eckart relating something Maimonides had saidabout i t [circumcision]with as much science as naivete, namely that the prepucewhich was removed was more useful for concupiscence and the pleasure of the fleshthan for generative purposes. This is why s this author says t was hardlypossible to separate a woman from a non-circumcised man. Therefore, it shows thatGods commandment ordering that the male be circumcised was to prevent in thewoman the superfluous, that is any excess of carnal concupiscence. Dont ask me,around all these roundabouts, why Heidegger, who has read Eckart like a master allhis life, never talks about either circumcision or Maimonides, this is another chapter.I only wanted to suggest that these reading grids, these folds, these obstacles, thesereferences and transferences, are as if under our skin, on our bare sex, at the momentwhen we pretend to address our own circumcision. In short, because there is nowild nature, nor any opposition which could stand between nature and culture, onlythe dif ferancebetween one and the other, well then, a text from which the name ofthe other would be absent, always resembles a dissimulation, an erasure, even acensorship. Violent, ingenuous r both at the same time. Even if the name of theother does not appear, it is there, i t swarms and maneuvers, sometimes it howls, andit becomes all the more authoritarian. It is better to be aware of it and to say it. Andbesides, other people are so much more interesting. In whom should we be interestedotherwise, tell me? Even in ourselves?EWALD: hat is the relationship between all these texts? Do they constitute anoeuvre?DERRIDA:hat is an oeuvre?EWALD: comprehensive set of texts, books, linked by the same identity.DERRIDA:rom a sociojuridical viewpoint, it is hardly questionable. There arecopyrights and legal registration, texts signed with the same name, rights, responsi-bilities, ownership, and insurances. I am very much interested in that. But this is onlyone stratum of the thing or of the singular adventure called oeuvre, and which I feelis constantly in the process of coming undone, of expropriating itself, of falling apartwithout ever gathering together into its signature. From the old concept of oeuvre,I would be tempted to retain the value of singularity and not that of self-identity orgathering. If there is something which repeats itself within me in an obsessivemanner, it is this paradox: there is singularity, but it does not reassemble, it


13/19

DERFUDAND EWALD A Certain Madness 285

consists in not reassembling. Maybe you will tell me that there is a way of notreassembling which is resembling short time ago it was called a style.EWALD:Can you tell in which way i t is similar?DERRIDA:his can be perceived only by the other. The idiom, i idiom there is, thatby which a signature is recognized, cannot be reappropriated, as paradoxical as it mayseem. It can be apprehended only by the other, surrendered to the other. Of course,may believe that I recognize myself, that I identify my signature or my phrase, but

only from experience or from an exercise in which I got involved, swept along U Sother, the possibility of repetition, and therefore of imitation, of simulacrum, beinginscribed at the very origins of this singularity.EWALD:ou invite [your readers] to do two things: to displace the practices of readingand to create a sort of community of readers.DERRIDA:do not like the word community much, I am not even sure that I like thething itself.EWALD: o u yourself used it .DERRIDA:f by community we understand, as is often the case, a harmonious whole,a consensus and a fundamental agreement under phenomena of disagreement or ofwar, 1 do not really believe in it, and in it I foresee as many threats as promises.EWALD:am thinking about Roger Chartiers work on reading, when he explains thatthe meaning of a book is linked to the practices of reading which one entertains withthat book. I was wondering whether i t could not be said that the work of your writingis to induce these practices of reading which will themselves be productive ofmeaning.DERRIDA:here is probably this irrepressible desire that a community be formed,but also that it should know its limit nd that its limit is its openness: once itbelieves that it has understood, recovered, interpreted, or preserved [alsoprotected,guarded] he text, then something of this text, something in it which is totally other,resists or escapes it, which calls for another community, which never lets itself betotally internalized into the memory of a present community. It is an experience ofmourning and of promise which institutes the community, but which also forbids itto gather together, which keeps in it the potential [reserve]of another communitywhich will sign, in another way, totally dfferent contracts.EWALD:Something may surprise in our discussion: we have not mentioneddeconstruction.DERRIDA:t is never indispensable, and I would rather not.EWALD:Does the term deconstruction refer to your fundamental project?DERRIDA:have never had a fundamental project. And deconstructions, whichI prefer to use in Its plural form, has probably never named a project, a method, or asystem. Especially not a philosophical system. Within contexts always very welldefined,it is one of the possible names used to designate, in short by metonymy, whatoccurs [cep arrive], or cannot manage to occur [c e qu i narrive p a s u arriver],~27. Again, arriver in the sense of tooccur, b u t also tocome, to arnve. [Trans.)


14/19

286 E D U C A T I O N A L T H O R Y SUMMER995 VOLUME5 NUMBER

namely a certain dislocation which in effect reiterates itself regularly ndeverywhere where there is something rather than nothing: within what is classicallycalled texts of classical philosophy, of course and for instance, but also within anytext, in the general sense which I try to justify for this word, that is to say withinexperience itself, within the social, historical, economic, technical, military, and soon, reality. For instance, the event of the so-called Gulf war is a powerful,spectacular, and tragic condensation of these deconstructions. Within the sameconflagration, within the same seism, quakes the cleaved genealogy of all thestructures, and of all the foundations about which I have just talked: the Westernworld and the history of philosophy, its bonds with several great irreconcilable[whatever s said of them)monotheisms on the one hand, andon the other hand, withnatural languages and national affects, with the concept of democracy and with thetheologico-politics, and finally with the infinite progress of a concept of interna-tional law, the limits of which appear more distinctly than ever. They appear so notonly because those who represent it [progress]or who appeal to i t always hail i t forthe benefit of specific hegemonies, and in any case, can only indefinitely attempt toinadequately approach it, but also because it is founded upon [and therefore limitedby) concepts of European philosophical modernity (nation, State, democracy, rela-tions of parliamentary democracy between the States, whether they are democraticor not, and so on)-not to mention what binds science, technology and the army tothese formidable problems, from within. These violent deconstructions are takingplace, i t is happening [it s coming, rr ive] , t does not wait for the completion ofthe philosophico-theoretical analysis of all I have evoked in one word: this analysisis necessary but infinite, and the reading which these cracks make possible will neveroverride the event; it merely intervenes there, it is inscribed in it .EWALD:What is the relation between deconstruction and critique?DERRIDA:ritical thinking, which I believe one should never renounce, has a history,and assumptions, the deconstructive analysis of which is also necessary. In the styleof the Enlightenment, of Kant or of Marx, but also in the sense of evaluation(aesthetic or literary), cri t ique supposes a judgment, a willful decision, or a choicebetween two terms, and to the concept of krinein, of krisis, it attaches a certainnegativity. To say that all this is deconstructible is not the same thing as todisqualify, to negate, deny, or exceed, to perform the cri t ique of the cri t ique (just likecritiques of the Kantian critique were written as soon as it appeared),but to think itspossibility from another point, that of the genealogy of judgment, will, conscience,or activity, of the binary structure, and so on. Perhaps this thinking transforms spaceand, through aporias, it lets appear the affirmation (nonpositive) assumed by allcritique and all negativity. I try to say something about this necessary aporiatic in OfSpirit and in Th e Oth er Heading about Europe.*

28. De lesprit, Heidegger -questions ouvertes. Presentation by Eliane Escoubas, e Cuhier du CollegeInternational de Philosophie 6 1988):213-45. Of Spirit, trans. Geoffrey Bennington andRachel Rowlby,CriticalInquiry 15 (1989):457-74andLAutrecap (Paris:Minuit , 1990).The Other Heading, trans. Pascalc-Anne Brault and Michael Nass (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992).


15/19

DERRIDAND EWALD A Certain Madness 287EWALD: ould we say that deconstruction is the techniques which you use for readingand writing?DERRIDA:ather, I would say one of its forms or manifestations. This form remainsnecessarily limited, determined by a number of open contextual characteristics(language, history, the European scene within which I write and am inscribed withall kinds of particulars more or less contingent to my own little history, and so on).But as I was telling you, there is deconstruction, deconstructions, everywhere, Whattakes the form of techniques, rules, and procedures, in France or in the Westernworld, in philosophical, juridico-political, aesthetic, and so on research, is indeed avery defined configuration; it is carried on nd therefore exceeded y processesmuch broader, more obscure and powerful, between this planet and the world.EWALD:hen deconstruction is not merely the critical activity of a literature orphilosophy professor in a university. I t is a historical movement. Kant characterizedhis age as the age of critique. Can we say that we are in the age of deconstruction?DERRIDA:ather, it is the age of a certain thematic of deconstruction, which indeedreceives a certain name, and can be formalized up to a certain point into methods andmodes of reproduction. But deconstructions neither begin nor end there. Of courseit is necessary, yet still very difficult to account for this intensification and this shiftto a theme and a name, to this beginning of formalization.EWALD: hat would be the proper historical beacons?DERRIDA: dont know. Indeed one should never renounce the historicalacknowledgement of these references, but I wonder whether something can take theform here of one single set of historical beacons, even whether the question can beposited in this way without precisely implying some historiographic axiomaticwhich should perhaps be suspended, since it is too tightly bound to deconstructiblephilosophemes. The things we are talking about (these deconstructions if you will)do not occur within what would be, and what would be recognizable under the nameof history, a directional history with periods, epochs, or revolutions, mutations,emergences, ruptures, scissions, e p i s t e m e , paradigms, and t h e m a t a (to respondaccording to the most diverse and best known historiographic codes). Eachdeconstructive reading proposes another one of those multiple sets of beacons,but I do not know around which main axis to orient them. If, as is the case for me,one also has reservations as to history and the epochality of Being, in Heideggerssense, what is left? This being said, from a phenomenological and even trivialviewpoint, the intensification and the thematization which we were discussing areindeed contemporary with the double post-World War era, with what is happeningto Europe, what is cleaving Europe and violently folding it back onto another whichis no longer even its other. Here again, permit me to refer you to what I try to suggestin Of Spirit, and T h e Other Heading .EWALD:ou mean the consequences of anthropology?DERRIDA:nthropology as a scientific project is definitely not a cause, no more thanany knowledge in itself. Rather, ethnological knowledge would be one of theconsequences, quite significant indeed, of this general shake-up. It reflects, in all the


16/19

288 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y SUMMER995 VOLUME5 NUMBER

meanings of this word, the (European) history of culture as colonization anddecolonization, mission in a broad sense, import-export of national or state models,ex-appropriations, identification crisis, and so on.EWALD:Where is all this going? We live in a period when no one knows what oneshould want anymore, in a period of very accomplished, very consummate nihilism.Everyone is waiting to know where we are going, what we are heading for, towardwhere we must set course, direct ourselves. work like yours, where is it going?DERRIDA:dont know. Or rather, I believe that this is not of the order of knowledge,which does not mean that we should renounce knowledge, and resign ourselves toobscurity. Responsibilities are at stake which, in order to elicit decisions and events,must not follow knowledge, nor proceed from knowledge like consequences oreffects. Otherwise, we would unfold a program and behave, at best, like somesmart missiles.29 hese responsibilities, which will determine, as you say, whereit is going, are heterogenous to the order of formalizable knowledge, and probably[or no doubt] to all the concepts upon which was built, I would even say urrested, theidea of responsibility or decision (consciousself, will, intentionality, autonomy, andso on .Every time a responsibility (ethicalor political) has to be taken, it is necessaryto go through antinomic injunctions and their aporiatic form, through a kind ofexperience of the impossible, without which the application of a rule by a consciousand self-identical subject, objectively subsuming a particular case under the gener-ality of a given law, comes on the contrary to irresponsibilize, at least to miss, thealways unheard-of singularity of the decision to be taken.

The event being singular each time, to the measure of the otherness of the other,each time one must invent, not without concepts, but by going each time beyond theconcept, without any guarantee nor certainty. This obligation can only be double,contradictory, and conflictual, since it calls for a responsibility and not a moral orpolitical technique. For instance, how, on the one h a n d , can one reaffirm thesingularity of the idiom (national or not), the rights of the minorities, the linguisticand cultural differences, and so on?How does one resist uniformization, homogeni-zation, cultural and linguistico-mediatic leveling, andi ts order of representation andspectacular rentability? However, on t h e o t he r h a n d , how can one fight for thiswithout sacrificing the most univocal communication possible, the translation, theinformation, the democratic discussion, and the law of the majority? Each time, onemust invent in order to betray as little as possible one and the other ith noprevious guarantee whatsoever of success. Another example: one should not re-nounce the idea of international law, nor the undeniable progress it made by beingincarnated into institutions, but one should reaffirm this immense idea in aneffective and significant fashion, yet without ceasing to carry an analysis and acritique (not only in a theoretical way but also in effect) of all the premises whichhave motivated such or such implementation of the aforementioned internationallaw, of the mystification of the references one can make to it, and of its embezzle-ment to the benefit of specific interests. One should even, as I suggested earlier,29. This interview took place at the time of the Gulf war. See news reports /i.e, Time magazine, January-February 1991) and their descriptions of, and comments on smart bombs and ground war. (Trans.]


17/19

A Certain Madness 289ERRIDAND EWALD

deconstruct (also, later in a certain way, but already and without any delay inanother way) he conceptual and historical limits of this institution of internationallaw, I mean the Office of the United Nations and the Security Council, of course.But naturally, once this double imperative (heavy with so many contradictions)had been acknowledged, once the merciless critique of politics had been engaged,that of al l the politics which, in the recent or more distant past, have constituted thepremises of this war, the decision which remained to be made could only be but aterrible strategic wager, betting on the possibility nce the tragedy would beappeased (and nothing will ever compensate for all the dead it will have cost) obe able to retain the memory, to draw some lessons and better respond to this doubleimperative. And a decision (for instance in politics) is always made at a time whenthe most critical theoretical analysis can no longer modify irreversible premises. Nomatter how one attempts the most necessary and exacting trial of Western, Israeli,and Arab-Islamic politics (besides, there is more than one [set of politics] under eachcategory),no matter how far one wants to andmust go back in theseproceedings, (andone must go back very, very far, through articulated stages), the decision to be made(embargoor no embargo, war or no war, such or such war objectives)must be madewithin a today, in one unique moment when past errors are no longer erasable, ifnot reparable. The terrifying strategic wager can he guaranteed in advance bynothing, not even by the reckoning (always necessarily speculative) that an oppositewager might have led us to the worst. I believe that these abstract figures can easilybe translated today, dont you think. (This nterview will have to be dated: at the eveof the phase so strangely called the ground [terrestre] war). I merely wanted tosuggest that all presumptions of guarantee and of noncontradiction in soparoxysticala situation (but this goes for every situation) is an optimistic, complacent, andirresponsible gesticulation, and therefore aprofound indecision andinactivity, underthe appearance of activism or resolution.EWALD:e can put things another way: is there a philosophy of Jacques Derrida?DERRIDA:o.EWALD:herefore there is no message.DERRIDA:o message.EWALD:s there any normativity?DERRIDA:f course there is, thats all there is. But it would be difficult for me toanswer you if you implicitly asked me whether what I say here is normative in theusual sense of this term. Why am I not very fond of this word normative in thiscontext? What I have just suggested about responsibility rather points toward a law,toward an imperative injunction to which one must eventually respond withoutnorms, without any actually presentable normativity or normality, without any-thing which might eventually be an object of knowledge, belonging to an order ofBeing [Idtre]or value. I am not even certain that the concept of duty [devoir] (or inany case ofmust-be (devoIr-&tre])an be measured. One will probably be tempted toreply: it is difficult to derive politics, morals, or law from all these apparentlynegative and abstract propositions. I believe the opposite. If they are stingy on these


18/19

290 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y SUMMER995 / VOLUME5 / NUMBERdoubts, questions, reservations, and clauses of nonknowledge, and so on, thenpolitics, morals, and law (which I do not confuse here with j~stice)~Oinsurendreassure themselves into delusion and good conscience nd are never far frombeing or doing som ething other than morals, politics, and law.EWALD:Do you draw this from your philosophy?DERRIDA:hat do you mean by drawtt?Derive? Find? Deduct? Induct? Drawconsequences Conclude? As to some philosophy which would be mine, I havealready told you no. Iprefer to speak of experience word which means all at oncecrossing, journey, and ordeal t once and the same time m ed i a t i z ed [culture,reading, interpretation, work, generalities, rules, and concepts) and singular donot say immediate (untranslatable affect, language, family name, and soon).To goback to your word, what I suggested earlier is drawn from [se t ire][without everescaping [sen irer] )his experience, more precisely where it intersects, where workand singularity intersect each other, or universality and this preferenceof singularitywhich i t is out of the question to renounce, which it would even be immoral torenounce. It is not a preference which I prefer, but the preference w i t h i n w h i ch I findmyself inscribed, and which gives body to the decision or the singular responsibilitywithout which there would be no morals, no rights, and no politics. I happen (withnumerous complications into which it is not the place nor do we have the time toenter nyway, I talk about it and more recently in D u droit a l a phi losophy,Circumfession, and The Other Heading) , happen then to have been born, as wewere saying, into t h e European preference, into the preference of the Frenchlanguage, nation, and citizenship, to take only this one example, and also into thepreference of this era, of those Ilove, of my family, of my friends-and of my enemiestoo, of course, and so on. At every moment, and it is our daily experience, thesepreferences can contradict and threaten the imperatives of the universal respect ofthe other, but neutralizing them or denying them would also be contrary to anyethico-political motive. For me, everything is drawn from experience (live, daily,naive or well thought out, always thrown against the impossible), f r o m thispreference which I m u s t bo th af f i rm and sacrif ice . For me, there is always, and Ibelieve that there m u s t b e m o r e t h a n o n e language, mine and that of the other (Iamgreatly simplifying)and 1must try to write in such a way that my language does notmake the language of the other suffer [souffrir], hat he/she puts up with me [ m esouffre]without suffering[sa ns ouffrir][becauseof it], receives the hospitality of mylanguage without losing or integrating himself/herself in i t. And reciprocally, butreciprocity is not symmetry nd first because we have here no neutral measure,no c o m m o n m e as ur e given by a third party. It must be invented at every moment,every sentence, with no guarantee, no absolute guard-rail [garde-foul .This is30. For more discussion on the distinction of law and justice, see The Other Heading and also Force deloi: fondement mystique de lautorite /Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority, trans. MaryQuaintance, Cardozo Law Review 11, nos. 5-6 (1990): 919-1045. First presented at the opening of acolloquium organized by Drusilla Cornell at Cardozo Law School, October 1989, under the titleDeconstruction and the Possibility of Just ice.Also in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice edD. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld, and D.C. Carlson (NewYork:Routledge, 1992).Reprinted in Forcede loi (Paris:Editions Galilee, 1994), 43-44/19. (Trans.]


19/19

A Certain Madness 291ERFSDAND EWALDequivalent to saying that madness, a certain madness,must watch each and everystep, and eventually must watch over thinking, just like reason also does.EWALD:Could we say also that between your work with philosophy and writing, andpolitics, one should not try to establish any connections?DERRIDA:he connections are not immediately identifiable, according to the currentcodes. Of course, there are connections, you dont doubt it, but here or there, they cango through routes which are not yet marked on the political map. In turn, theypoliticize discursive zones, corpora, and loci of experience which are generallyperceived as apolitical or politically neutral. There are discourses and gestures whosecode and rhetoric are by all appearances highly political but whose foreseeablesubmission to worn out programs seems to me seriously apolitical, or depoliticizing.And vice versa, if you like.EWALD:Some will say that in regard to a certain tradition of philosophy which alwaysentailed a moral component, your practice of philosophy is somewhat disappointing.DERRIDA:ell, if this is true, let me hope for this disappointment. What is adisappointment? At least, it prompts us to wonder why we were waiting, why wewere expecting such or such thing, from such or such thing, from such or such person.It is still the best incentive to ask questions and to reflect. Why is a philosophyexpected where it is explained that i t must also be about something else concerningphilosophy? Why was it believed that morality was a part of philosophy? Was itjustified, morally justified, for instance, to believe that a philosophy should includea moral segment, area or consequence, the consequence of some philosophicalknowledge? Now, I told you earlier, indeed there is no philosophy, nor a philosophyof philosophy, which would be called deconstruction and which would derive fromand by itself a moral segment. But this does not mean that the deconstructiveexperience is not, does not practice, or deploy within itself, any responsibility, noreven any ethico-political responsibility. Iwould not say that by questioning philoso-phy on its treatment of ethics, politics, and the concept of responsibility,deconstruction aligns itself on a concept still higher than responsibility ecauseI am distrustful, we have learned to be distrustful also of this value of height anddepth [altitude of the a l t u s )-but it aligns itself on an exactingness which I believemore un t rac tab le about the response or the responsibility. Without which today, inmy eyes, no ethico-political question has a chance to be opened or awakened. I shallnot venture to say that this is a hyper-ethical or hyper-political radicalization, noteven or that would take us too far today hether the words ethical andpolitical are still the most appropriate to name this other exigency, gentle oruntractable, this precisely intractable exigency of the other.

Documents

Derrida, J - A Certain Madness Must Watch Over Thinking, (1995) 45 Educational Theory 273